


Brighter Than Sunshine ~ Volume 1, Chapter 1 "Meet-Cute"

by Cassie_Sandsmark, Somuchbraver



Series: Brighter Than Sunshine Volume 1 [1]
Category: DCU
Genre: Bisexual Female Characters, DC AU - Freeform, F/F, Femslash, Metropolis, Metropolis University, Trans Female Character, elements from the new cinematic universe, future chapters will be NC-17, gendered slur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 07:32:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3601626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cassie_Sandsmark/pseuds/Cassie_Sandsmark, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somuchbraver/pseuds/Somuchbraver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Few people know that Cassie Sandsmark is Wonder Girl, but even fewer know who this disarming pretty, black-haired and blue-eyed girl she's been drawn to really is, or where she came from. When the two coeds meet and each gets busy trying to woo and beguile the other, greater secrets than either of them had ever imagined seem bound to surface, and Cassie's identity will be put in ultimate jeopardy as her secret is spread too thin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brighter Than Sunshine ~ Volume 1, Chapter 1 "Meet-Cute"

**Author's Note:**

> This story is about a romantic relationship between Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) and Rule 63'd (female) version of 'Superboy.' We've omitted the majority of the Superfamily from our universe to make this work and put this story 10 years after the events in Man of Steel. 'Superman' has been active for at least that long, and Cassie herself (as Wonder Girl) has been active for a little over 3 years, since she was 15. 
> 
> Be advised that there are subsequent episodes in this same series. You can find the link to the rest of the series at the top of this page. 
> 
> Follow Our Tumblr at (http://brighterthnsunshine.tumblr.com/) for fan-art, photo manips, information related to our story as it progresses, and more! 
> 
> Mission Statement: Lady superheroes need to make out more.
> 
> Your comments are oxygen to us!

 

## Brighter Than Sunshine ~ Volume 1, Chapter 1 "Meet Cute"

[Brighter than Sunshine Tumblr ](http://brighterthnsunshine.tumblr.com)

 

It was Thursday, the 10th of September (2014), and early in the morning. Samantha Graves, a short but voluptuous girl, was re-lacing one of her tennis shoes while sitting next to a friend and chatting idly on the risers of Harper Memorial Gymnasium, where Metropolis University’s cheer-leading team had reserved Fall-Semester Try-Out space (on account of rain). She had jet black hair clipped at the back of her head and luminescent blue eyes that looked almost violet against the purple and gold racer-back tank and yoga pants she was wearing.

While the cheerleaders and their various freshman and sophomore prospectives were assembling on and in front of the risers in the auxiliary gymnasium, the side door which led onto the gym floor from the restroom lobby opened, and another girl, tall, curvy, and blonde with long, wavy hair that hung down to the middle of her back, slouched into the gymnasium with a black duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She was wearing a tight red cropped t-shirt with the golden ‘W’ symbol of Wonder Woman emblazoned across its chest, and a pair of black yoga pants. Unlike most of the rest of the ‘prospies’ she entered alone, and not from the direction of the locker room but from an exterior entrance corridor and hallway bathroom. Gritting her teeth against the fresh wave of social anxiety that she began feeling as soon as she entered the gym, the blonde girl glanced around herself with an uncertain expression, looking for the older girl who had invited her to try out for the squad.

Meanwhile the crowd surrounding Samantha burst out in laughter as she finished telling the ribald ending to one of her stories, and she responded with a sly grin, leaning back on the riser. The squad members in the room looked annoyed with the attention being paid to one of their freshmen prospies, rather than to themselves, while one kind-eyed girl averted her gaze and smiled encouragingly at the blonde who’d just entered the gym, waving her over.

The alpha-girl on the squad, a short, perky blonde girl with steely eyes, recalled having a bad experience the preceding year with attention-grabbing party-girls on the team, so she was immediately ruffled by the frivolity in the ranks, clearing her throat. Samantha sneered a bit and side-eyed the offending upper-classwoman. The blonde girl, meanwhile, took advantage of the upper-classwoman calling the group of squad members and aspirants to attention and slipped in under her arm to take her seat next to the kind-eyed girl who had smiled at her before, offering her meek apologies for her almost-tardiness in the process. “Am I late?” She murmured under her breath to Kind-Eyes as she shrugged the duffel off of her shoulder and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. “… and, why’s everyone laughing?”

The kind-eyed girl smiled and shook her head at the first question, raising a brow at the second question. “Some slutty frat boy, as far as I can tell.” She winced under the scolding eyes of her squad-superior as the older girl drew the group’s attention toward the front of the room and began giving instructions.

“Oh, thank goodness.” The blonde girl smiled, and breathed a sigh of relief, whispering back, “I was afraid I was wearing the wrong pants or something stupid like that.” She made an awkward face and shrugged, then took advantage of the squad leader turning away for a moment and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Cassandra – Cassie, if you’d rather.”

The kind-eyed girl took Cassie’s hand and lowered her voice so she wouldn't further invoke the squad-leader’s wrath. “Julie. I think you **can** actually wear the wrong pants around here- but I don’t know which ones those are, so don’t tell.”

Cassie giggled slightly but kept her voice low so as not to attract attention while she checked the laces on her sneakers. “No worries: I feel a little out of my element here. In high school I wasn’t exactly cheerleader material. Still not sure I should be here.”

Julie gave a borderline-smug smile as she averted her eyes. “You might find the requirements are a little bit more about athleticism now and less about, uhm, hair and glutes.”

Cassie grinned, then. “Well, good. _There_ , I think I’ve got things covered.” She stood up and stretched to her full, 5’10” height. “I, uh, hit a growth spurt two years ago. C’mon, let’s go impress.”

Julie laughed and pushed off the risers as the girls joined the formation that was beginning to learn the latest cheer. On the other end of the risers, Samantha led a gaggle of girls out onto the gym floor but ended up near the sidelines trying not to be caught eyeing a few of the other girls, Cassie included.

Feeling encouraged by making a friend already, Cassandra danced out onto the gymnasium’s lacquered floor. She began going through a series of stretches, and then jumped in to join in the squad’s cheer routines. She started to pay attention to some of the other girls as she did so and noticed the cute, short dark-haired girl hovering on the outside of the group who was just sort of there, not really participating as such, but just looking around at everyone instead. She raised a curious eyebrow at her, leaning towards Julie. “Hey – who’s that girl?”

Julie threw a glance over her shoulder at Samantha. The black haired girl was picking up the moves but with a sort of distant half-interest. She turned her attention on the other girls now and then but they were all much more eager and focused. “Uh- I heard someone call her Sam? Freshman for sure. From a glance I’d say the former-high school-cheerleader type.” She shrugged one shoulder.

“Why’s she keep looking at us?” Cassie whispered back, throwing herself eagerly into her dance routine while trying not to pay attention to the shorter girl’s roving gaze. “Are we doing something wrong?” Despite her efforts, though, the tall blonde girl couldn’t help but glancing back over her shoulder at ‘Sam’ again, not just noticing the girl’s out-of-step behavior, but also just _how very cute_ she was. The distracting thought made her smile a little. But just then their eyes met, and for a second, Cassie felt a bit of a charge run through her as her green eyes locked onto the other girl’s startlingly pretty blues. It was just a momentary contact, but for some reason it spun her head, and she tripped up in her routine,. Samantha, having been caught looking, averted her gaze and pretended like she’d been looking at the leader the whole time. Julie glanced back one more time, “Is she looking?”

Cassie shrugged, doing her best to ignore the other girl’s gaze again while she refocused on her moves, feeling a bit flustered and confused. “I don’t know, I can’t see her anymore.” Fortunately for the blonde girl, however, recovery was somewhat easier than it might have been for someone else. Now that she was …older, and _different_ from some of her fellow prospies because of _what she was_ , she was discovering that her reflexes and agility were more than a match for the cheer-leading routines of Met University’s Cheer leading Squad. In fact, it was almost effortless to go through their routine. It was as easy as… dancing. “Wow, this is actually really fun…” she caught herself saying out loud.

Julie laughed and shook her head, and a few girls around her broke into giggles. “Well, imagine that.” The group was starting to reveal the girls who were picking it up and the girls who were straggling. The least graceful girls were gradually trimmed by a few squad-members so that the group became smaller and smaller. Cassie and Julie – and for some reason Samantha, although she was barely even playing along – were part of the group that remained. “Well, I never thought–” Cassie grinned at her new friend, and then started tossing her pony tail around her shoulders as she started throwing her body more eagerly into the routine, adding a few non-disruptive shimmies into her routine. She started smiling, and then gradually broke out into a full-on grin. She was good at this. There weren’t a whole lot of things she could really say that about.

Samantha caught one of Cassie’s shimmies when she was casting a glance her way again and almost tripped when she caught sight of the tall, curvy blonde girl moving so fluidly to the music. By now, of course, she was accustomed to catching herself before she could crack the floor beneath her, so she shot a hand out and caught herself gingerly. Her friend snickered and she smirked, tripping her. Three girls in front of her went down. A pile-up commenced.

“–I just agreed to try out because some pretty blonde girl told me that the quickest way to make friends in college was to try out for all the …things,” Cassie was telling Julie as she danced her way through the cheer squad moves, initially oblivious to the tangle of girls falling all over each other at the other end of the tryout group. “Cheerleading, Pledging, Dance Team, Volleyball… I never thought I might enjoy some of it. –Woah!” But when the practice routine came apart as several girls tumbled into one another and wound up on top of each other on the floor and others pushed out of the ranks to get away from the pile, Cassie skipped lightly out of the disorder and turned towards the source of it, catching sight of the cute black-haired girl again and blinking at her, her gaze lingering.

Samantha went pink around the ears and launched herself effortlessly off the floor as the rest of the girls stumbled to their feet; brushing off a thigh as if she hadn’t been the source of the disaster. Her friend laughed and shoved her, and she did a little pratfall for effect and grinned wickedly. Catching Cassie’s gaze as it lingered she shot her a grin, giving a little sarcastic bow when the other girls started to look around for a culprit to the disaster.

Cassie blinked rapidly when the other girl - 'Sam' - caught her looking. She surprised herself by blushing, stumbling over her own feet again, even though she was standing completely still, stretching her upper arms. She glanced around for something else to look at, and then turned to Julie. “So… um, why’re you trying out for the squad?”

Samantha took the gaze-based brush-off in stride and re-focused her attention on resisting the squad leader’s efforts to bring the remaining girls back to order. Julie gave a little half-smile and rubbed the back of her head at the question. “Second year running. I bombed the audition last time around but this time is going A LOT smoother.”

“What, even with the….” Cassie waved over her shoulder behind her, but elected not to look at the dark haired girl again. “Pile-up collapsing behind us?”

She raised her eyebrows at the girls stumbling to their feet. “Yup. Maybe I got eliminated last time before the real shenanigans began?”

“Awww, you were eliminated? No way,” Cassie protested, “You’re good!” She smiled and then turned back towards the front of the room. But out of the corner of her eye, she couldn’t help but notice the dark haired girl again. _Hmmm_.

Julie gave a little smile and half-shrugged. “I got better, I think.” The squad leader was bunching up the remaining girls and starting to add actual cheering to the routine they’d just learned. Samantha was NOT digging this part of the try outs, giving her eyes a little roll before deigning to take part.

Despite her attempts to avoid it, Cassie got ‘bunched up’ next to Samantha, and caught the dark-haired girl’s little eye roll, and the attitude. She raised an eyebrow at her and frowned. “What’s your deal? Do you think you’re too good for Cheerleading Tryouts?”

Samantha smirked and sideways glanced at her. “You mean everyone enjoys the jumping up and down and the yelling?”

“Well,” Cassie glanced around herself at the number of girls who were taking themselves off of the gymnasium floor, and shrugged. “Well, some of us do. Some of us are excited about this… why aren’t you?”

The other girl raised a brow. “I’ve never been real thrilled about the whole pep-rally mentality. I don’t see me being all hyped up for a sport most people consider ancillary to the football team, and uh- yelling,” she added, as if that last part was self-evident.

Cassie cocked her head to the side and frowned, confused. “But then… why are you here if you don’t want to … cheer? Lead people in school spirit, pump people up before games, encourage people to be happy, excited, and enthusiastic about their school, their teams- their sports?”

Samantha laughed and shook her head at Cassie’s complete description of cheer leading. She half-smiled and shrugged, jumping through the routine. “Moral support, mostly. Some of my girls dragged me here. But this all is apparently right up your alley?”

Cassie shrugged, beginning to work her way through the routine in time with the Captain in front of her. “I don’t know, maybe. I’ve never done anything like this before, but someone said this was the way to make friends in college, and what do you know?” She put a little extra _oomph_ into her routine moves, and grinned, challengingly. “Turns out I’m kinda good at this.”

She smirked, giving Cassie a once over as she moved. “Turns out.” She flicked her eyes back to the cheer captain.

Cassie blushed again at the girl’s bold look and then let out a deep breath. She glanced over at her, this time looking at the other, darker haired, shorter girl and allowing her gaze to linger just as brazenly. “Your moves aren’t so bad either, you know.”

She grinned and gave a completely out-of-routine twirl so that the hair that hung from the clip in her hair swirled and bounced around her shoulders. “I do know.”

Cassie blushed again and turned her head – part way – keeping the dark haired girl in her vision out of the corner of her eye. “Hey, that’s cheating,” she whispered, exhaling forcefully as she tried to focus on her dancing. “You’re doing that on purpose.”

She smirked and jammed her tongue up against the back of her front teeth. “I’m Samantha. I do everything on purpose.”

“I’m Cassandra,” The taller, busty blonde said, shaking her head and shivering as she tried to clear her mind and focus on her dance routine. “And you’re a distracting tease.”

Samantha grinned a put a sexy little hip-hop step into the routine as they moved, shooting a defiant look at the cheer captain. “Don’t sweat it, you’ve already got a spot. And they’ll just try to recruit me because I’m so easy to throw.”

Cassie grinned at the dark-haired girl’s appraisal of her chances, and then threw a bit more shimmy into her shake. “You said ‘try.’ Are you really not interested?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I could maybe get used to the jumping and tossing people and human pyramids and whatever, but I don’t see me shouting my way through games on weekends.”

Cassie laughed, bemused, and shook her blonde ponytail about her shoulders. “Your loss. I intend to have a lot of fun on this squad.” She grinned, throwing her shoulders back.

Samantha chuckled. “I bet you do.”

Catching on to the two girls' whispered banter, the squad captain reshuffled the prospies and divided Cassie and Samantha onto separate sides of the remaining group. After another twenty minutes of narrowing down the girls and jumping through various cheer-related hoops she called a stop to the audition and told the remaining girls that she’d post the results later in the week. One of the other, older girls thanked them all for coming out to try out. The crowd of applicants dispersed much in the same way they had entered the auditorium. Cassie broke with the rest of the girls and walked with Julie back towards their gear, complimenting each other on their tryout performances, toweling off their necks, and exchanging phone numbers. But as everyone started filing out, Cassie paused at the door and glanced back over her shoulder at the shorter, hot dark haired girl who was giggling with her friends as they headed to the showers. Biting and worrying her lip, Cassie let her gaze linger one more time and then smirked and slipped out of the gym.

 

* * *

 

A few days later, on the Monday morning at the beginning of Rush Week, when all the various Greek organizations on campus were out lining the main sidewalk through the Campus Quad at Met U, the tall, blonde and buxom eighteen-years-old Cassie found herself browsing through the booths of the various campus sororities. Wearing a pair of knee-high black leather boots with 2″ heels over a pair of tight, stonewashed stretch skinny jeans and a form-fitting black, embroidered mesh top, she was examining the literature of the various house booths she passed, flanked on the one hand by her new friend, Julie, and her tall, statuesque 'older sister.' She smiled anxiously at the enthusiastic sorority sisters talking about the wide varieties of benefits that membership in their individual houses conferred on a sister, things like party invites and early notification of campus event planning and dibs on new football players, and she blushed at the persistent and flattering attention that her tall, curvaceous figure and pretty face were drawing from a number of frat boys. Cassie relied upon the intimidating presence of her 6’1″ ‘older sister,’ the dark haired and inhumanly beautiful Amazonian ‘Donna,’ to deter the more persistent attentions that she and Julie were receiving. This suited the blonde girl just fine, as her discomfort with new social situations meant that she could really only handle a few minutes of interaction with each new face that she encountered before she felt the urge to back away.

Meanwhile, across the quad, Samantha’s friends had already split themselves between a few sororities and as a result her effortless networking and reputation for shrewd fashion sense had made her a desirable match, so the black-haired, blue-eyed girl was thoroughly enjoying the extensive attention she was receiving from all sides. She had a decision on her hands, though. Because although she was _enjoying_ the drama of being courted and flitted from table to table, chatting up prospective sisters, she knew that soon she would have to make a serious decision about which sorority, specifically, she wanted to pledge, and the ramifications of that choice could, she knew, have long-lasting impacts on her social situation here at Met U. But even though she was in the midst of the decision making process, once the black-haired girl spotted the blonde girl from cheerleading practice a few days earlier, milling about a few booths away with what looked like a pair of friends, she made a bee-line for the three women, a grin tugging at her mouth.

As Samantha approached, Cassie was arguing with a persistent and straight-laced looking sorority sister from the Delta Sigma Tau household – a household known for its _no-fun-no-frills_ attitude and its emphases on campus community service and high-octane-scholarship – when Samantha approached. Although the tall blonde was _trying_ to convince the other girl that academic success was not the be all and end all of her ambitions at college, the other girl – Priss Something, a name which Cassandra decided suited the other girl just right – was refusing to let up, and her dogged attempts to convince Cassie of the importance of the clearly-defined study strategy and the academic support network that the Delta Sigmas provided distracted her as the other girl came up.

As she neared, Samantha raised an eyebrow at the choice of booth- a sorority _she_ hadn’t even considered – one of the _few_ that could be said about. She slid in and didn’t address anyone in particular. “You know _I’ve_ heard that the difference between Sigma-Taus and everyone else is that Sigma-Taus just like to announce how hard they’re working while the rest of us hold down just as much.”

The Sigma Tau representative – bushy red pigtails and horn-rimmed glasses and all – whirled on Samantha and opened her mouth to retort, but as she did so the taller, Amazonian black-haired girl who was accompanying Cassie stepped between the two of them and crossed her arms over her chest, clearing her throat. “Go away,” she told the obnoxious sorority sister, who took one look at the towering glamazon in front of her and meekly retreated. Donna sighed and shook her hair, then grinned at her ‘little sister.' “C’mon, Cass, you don’t want to pledge to the study club anyway. You said you wanted to go to college to live a little, right? Let’s go find you one of the partying sororities to join—” she turned around and looked strangely down at Samantha, as if noticing her for the first time. “Oh, hello.”

Samantha raised an eyebrow at Donna and cocked her head a bit when the supermodel sized girl all but shooed the Sigma Tau away. “Hey. If I’ve heard right, this booth IS a total waste of time unless you’re looking for a bullet point on your CV.”

Cassie put the Sigma Tau literature down on the booth and turned her head towards the slightly familiar voice and was surprised when she came eye-to-eye with the pretty dark-haired girl that she’d met at Cheerleading practice. “Oh, hi! Hello,” she chirped, surprisingly excited to see the blue-eyed girl again. “Um…” she blanched and fished for the girl’s name, turning her head to the side and wincing as she groaned. “…Saaaaamantha?”

Samantha smirked. “I can see I left an indelible impression.”

“Sorry,” Cassie apologized, wincing again. “Names don’t really stick in my head,” she shrugged apologetically, and then her voice dropped a bit as she blushed, tucking some of her hair behind one of her ears. “But ummm, you _did_ make an impression.” She blushed brighter for a moment, and then waved to the side, at Donna. “Ummm, this is my … sort of big sister, Donna. And I don’t know if you met Julie, at tryouts…”

Samantha’s smile went bright for a moment at the acknowledgement before she nodded at Donna and Julie. Donna, who was watching the back and forth between the pretty, shorter girl and her sister with some interest, said nothing, but Julie interrupted eagerly. “We didn’t meet. You were on the call sheets for cheer leading though.”

Sam gave a little smile. “Oh was I? Well it’s…very nice to be included.”

“Seriously?” Cassie cocked her head to the side and rolled her eyes at the dark-haired girl. “After all that jumping and sweating and yelling… you’re still not gonna join the squad?”

The other girl smiled off the eye roll, taking it as a sign of affection. “Nope. I guess some of us just lack the extra energy all that cheering requires. I’m still on the hunt for an extracurricular.”

“And you picked ‘joining a sorority?’” Cassie asked, cocking her head to the side and smirking. “Social climber or party girl?”

The blue-eyed girl smirked. “A girl can’t aspire to both? You guys are here too, what does that make you?”

Julie cut in, concerned that anyone was making a faulty assumption about her. “I’m not- uh, looking at all. I’m a Lambda Omega.”

Cassie smiled secretively and batted her eyelashes, winking at Donna. “You could say Greek life just sort of runs in my veins.” Donna rolled her eyes and elbowed the blonde girl in the ribs. “Cute, ‘little sister.” Cassie smiled back and then raised an eyebrow at Julie. “What’s Lambda Omega?”

Sam raised a brow at the exchange, but before she could say anything, Julie answered Cassie’s question. “I didn’t want to put any sway on the big decision. Lambda Omegas are pretty cool, though. A little more uh-” She glanced around at the booths around them. “... _chill_ than a lot of the Greek life around here.”

“Chill, huh?” Cassie worried her pouty lower lip again, looking around. Then she sighed, throwing her arms up in the air and shrugging. “Ohhh blah…I don’t know what I want in a sorority; if I knew what sorority life was _like_ I wouldn’t need to join one…” She turned and looked at Samantha. “Who are you interested in?”

Samantha looked around the square once appraisingly. “I’ve narrowed it down to Tri-Psi, Delta-Nu, and Omega Beta Zeta. I might put in bids to all three, but that feels kind of desperate. I mean I am going to _choose_ the one I get.”

“Really?” The blonde girl raised her eyebrows and blinked at that. “You can apply to more than one? How does that work for …rush week, pledging, initiation, all that stuff?”

The dark-haired girl flicked a shoulder in a casual shrug. “You put in bids at the sororities of your choice, they say yes or no, but you can only pledge just one.”

“Well…” Cassie stepped a bit closer, trying to eye whatever pamphlets and papers Samantha might be carrying. “Don’t suppose you could give me the …quick and dirty version of what…” she winced, trying to recall what the names she’d mentioned were. “Tri-Psi, Delta No, and Omega Beta Omelets?”

She met the blonde’s eyes and gave a little smile, offering a pamphlet. “I’ve got a friend who’s going to pledge Tri-Psi, they have a reputation for being pretty bitchy but they’ve got all the best parties for the semester locked down already. Delta Nu seems like it’s made up entirely of really hot girls which means they’ve got the frat connections and big money. Omega Beta Zeta is the direction I’m leaning currently because I spent a while at that booth and those girls are… powerful.”

“Powerful?” Cassie raised an inquisitive eyebrow again, stepping up alongside the dark haired girl and accepting the pamphlet, leafing through it. The crowd pushed between Cassie and her friends, separating them slightly and isolating Samantha and Cassandra on one side of the booth and Julie and Donna, who were watching the other two girls with raised eyebrows, on the other. “Powerful how?”

She made a little face and looked thoughtful. “Powerful like- confident? Perfect corners on their eyeliner, daring fashion choices, a general air of “you wish you were our sister” hanging around the booth…”

“Hmmm…” Cassie sighed and glanced around for Julie, the cute (if somewhat self-effacing) girl a few feet away, and at the impossibly beautiful glamazon tower of self-confidence and poise that was Donna, who was just now pretending to be looking all around her in bemusement at college undergraduate hijinks. Mentally, she contrasted her own, awkward and anxious self with the personalities of her two friends and then said “Yeah, I don’t know if I could even muster up faking that level of confidence.” She bit her lower lip again, then shrugged, smiling a little. “And bitchy’s not my thing, but I do like hot girls,” she said, smiling brightly at Samantha and batting her eyelashes at her, lowering her voice intimately and shielding her face by turning her body so that her hair covered the side of her that Julie and Donna were watching. “As you guessed during tryouts.” Raising her voice back to its previous level again she coughed and continued “… So I guess I’ll go talk to Delta Nu. Or maybe Lambda.” She shrugged and smiled brightly again. “I’m kinda laid back…”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up at the flirting and she grinned and ducked a bit when she acknowledged the _essential gayness_ of their last meeting. “You are Delta Nu eligible, no doubt about that.”

Julie, on the other hand, knew instinctively that Cassie wasn’t Delta Nu material - she was too damned sweet - and so once the press of people ceased she broke in. “Lambda is great, everyone’s super nice- some of the more “alpha” sororities or whatever, are less so.”

Cassie grinned and pinkened at the cheeks from Samantha’s compliment, then turned to Julie and smiled at her. Before she could speak, though, Donna broke in from over Cassie’s other shoulder and said, “but it’s not like you don’t belong to another laid back sisterhood full of tall, strong, powerful women, right?”

Samantha cocked her head, looking at Donna curiously. “Which one is that?”

The blonde girl whirled on her ‘big sister,’ and glared daggers at her. Donna, not having a technical secret identity of her own, was always more cavalier about Cassie’s than she would have preferred. “She’s talking about the, Gateway City High School’s chapter of the, uh…. Alpha Mu Alpha … Zeta… Omicron … Nu Society for Volleyball players and … Girls. Tall ones.” She turned around and smiled at Samantha, changing the subject. “Don’t suppose you’re interested in a laid back college sorority?” She smiled brightly and winked.

The blue-eyed girl blinked a few times in reaction to the strange cover story. “That sounds involved.” She shrugged, biting the corner of her lip. “I suppose there’s no harm in checking it out. I’m pretty deep into my choices though.”

Cassie tilted her head to the side and put on an enticing smile. “Well, while you waste your time checking it out, you can tell me a little more about you.”

Sam smiled brightly. “Sounds like a perfectly worthy waste of time.”

Julie’s eyebrows shot up when she finally realized what was happening and her eyes went a little wide with the realization. She haltingly regained her composure. “Great! The booth is over that way.” She gestured toward the far side of the courtyard with the intention of leading them off that way.

Cassandra blushed at Julie’s reaction, then ducked her head behind her blond hair for a moment, privately excited at Samantha’s response to her flirting. She bit her lip as she started walking in the direction of the booth, slowing down some to let Julie draw ahead of herself and Samantha. “So… where did _you_ move here from?” She asked the dark-haired girl next to her, faking casual interest.

Samantha followed Julie with them toward the Lambda booth at a casual pace, the courtyard stuffed with freshmen. “I didn’t. I’m straight out of Met Academy on the Upper East Side of Metropolis. You’re from out of town, though?”

“Kind of, I guess,” Cassie shrugged. “I used to live in Gateway City with my mom, who was curator of the Greek collection at the Gateway Museum of Antiquities. But when the collection was transferred to the Metropolitan Museum of History last winter, my mom and I moved here.”

Samantha noted something about the “Greek” comment from earlier connecting to the current story and nodded. “So that puts you living at home, then?”

Cassie ducked her head and laughed. “Uh, no. As soon as I could I moved into the dorms. I love my mom, but I wanted to be out on my own. My mom and I don’t see eye to eye about all my extra-curriculars.”

The raven-haired girl smirked. “I hear you on that. I got out of the house the moment it was financially viable. I mean I didn’t have a helicopter mom or anything, but it’s kind of excellent to be down to zero bosses.”

Cassie smiled and nodded. “Right? I know it sounds silly, but deciding when I go out, when I come home…what I do with my evenings or who I choose to see….”

Sam nodded. “Well, whether I come home or not is more accurate…”

“What I decide to wear…” Cassie smirked. “The kinds of trouble I get myself into …”

The other girl laughed. “What kinds are those?”

Cassie waved her hand dismissively. “The kind that would make my mother threaten to ground me and take away my…” she blushed and ducked her head, “…my license.”

Samantha grinned, eyeing the blonde girl playfully, being shameless at this point. “Ooh a genuine badass…”

Cassie blushed again, tucking some of her blond hair behind her ear and grinning back, brazenly. “I’ve had some adventures. What about you?”

Samantha grinned again, batting her eyelashes brazenly. “Oh, I’m one of those textbook overly-permissive parent cases where I was always raising the bar in a fervent search for boundaries. The cops were the ones putting their foot down when I got out of line.”

“MCPD?” Cassie whistled. “That must have been fun. Dan Turpin, he’s a real…” she bit her lower lip and winced. “I mean, I heard the cops in Metropolis were a bit hard on underage partying and stuff.”

The dark-haired girl laughed. “Like they have nothing better to do, I swear. How did you get to know a Metropolis cop by his first name??”

“Uh…just…heard it somewhere.” Cassie waved her hand again, shaking her head so that her blonde hair danced around her shoulders. Instead of answering, she went for the flirt. “You have a really pretty voice, you know?”

The move worked like a charm, Samantha’s attention stuttering and eyelashes fluttering. “…do I?”

Cassandra blushed and nodded, licking her upper lip and making eyes at the dark-haired girl. “Yeaaahhhhh… I just … sorta blurted that out, huh?”

Samantha smirked and bit her lip, her bright blue eyes trained on the blush creeping across Cassie’s cheeks. “Well, less true things have been said.”

Cassie blushed some more, rolling her eyes and smiling as they reached the sorority’s booth. She grabbed one of their pamphlets and handed it to Samantha with a smile, then took one for herself. “Here you go.”

Samantha flipped open the pamphlet disinterestedly and eyed the booth, where the girls were talking to every passing freshman. “Chill and friendly.”

The blonde smiled, nodding. “Yeah, I… well, they seem really nice. Julie’s really nice, too. Bunch of nice people.”

The other girl looked hesitant for the first time before she mustered a smile. “Yup, they seem great.”

Cassie caught the change in expression and was instantly intrigued. “…something wrong?” She asked in a low, quiet voice.

She smiled and shrugged; they weren’t that close. “Not my scene.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Cassie shrugged and nodded. “I get that. No problem.” She smiled and put the pamphlet down. “But at least I got to ask you a few things about yourself on the walk over.”

Samantha smiled and stepped in a little closer; dangerously close to invading Cassie’s personal bubble. “What all do you want to know about me?”

Cassandra raised her eyebrows as Samantha moved closer, her eyelids fluttering as she sucked in a breath, feeling her closeness like a breath on her neck. “…right now? What’s your taste in girls run to?”

Samantha’s smile warmed as she felt the air between them heat up. She got quieter. “Tall with fantastic eyes, lucky you.”

Cassandra blushed and chewed her lower lip while she dimpled, her cheeks as red as apples. “Well, then,” she licked her lips and cleared her throat, her eyes sparkling as she took out her phone, punched the unlock code, and offered it to Samantha. “Maybe you should give a girl a call, sometime.” Samantha smiled and took the phone, _somehow_ managing to not look as eager as she felt. She punched her own cell number into the device and called her own pocket, her phone vibrating at her hip. Cassie took the phone back with a sustained smile of her own, her eyebrows jumping up and down as she pursed her lips and beamed. “I’ll look forward to your call.”

The blue-eyed girl smiled and backed off a pace. “Awesome.” She shot Cassie another smile before disappearing into the crowd.

 

* * *

 

After their encounter on Monday morning in the Quad, Samantha spent the next three days thinking about calling the tall blonde cheerleader but resisting the urge to pick up the phone. She was suffering from a combination of equal parts not wanting to seem too eager and not sure how serious the whole thing was. Her life had become a little more complicated than she was used to since she’d swapped her mother’s penthouse condo in the city for the dorms. Dating in high school for her had been urgent and secretive and the occasional hookups with girls had been even more so. Now that she had so much more freedom she found herself much more responsible for the fallout of her hookups. The majority of freshmen had a similar mindset to hers and were hardly interested in perfunctory morning discussions- especially the straight girls- but something about Cassie’s coy but earnest routine made her feel like this girl was an exception. Were anything to happen between them, there would probably be ... ramifications. She deliberated about that for a while, but on the fourth day she picked up the phone and called Cassie.

Cassie, meanwhile, had gotten busy with her classes as the week moved along, and with the first cheerleading practices of the semester. Practice itself was no big deal – her secret superpowers ensured that she was unusually good at picking up the routines, making it all look effortless. Classes, on the other hand, were bit more difficult for the eighteen year old. Although she was very bright, and had a personal interest in the subjects that she was studying – ancient history and archaeology, in addition to the boiler plate reading and math classes – her extra-curricular activities, both those officially licensed by the school and those she was engaged in on her free time, were really cutting into her focus.

But when she wasn’t cramming British Literature or Algebra, or learning cheer routines with the rest of her squad, Cassandra’s thoughts kept coming back to the beautiful, raven-haired girl that she’d given her number to a few days ago. Her smile, her eyes, the way her lips moved when she spoke… she found herself smiling each time she thought about her, and a little thrill of excitement ran through her when she remembered the electric charge that had sparked between them at the end of their last encounter. As the days passed by her, though, hoping for the other girl to call, her spirits started to fall slightly. _Maybe I was wrong about the whole thing_ , she considered late on Thursday evening as she crawled into bed, checking her phone one more time in vain for new messages. Maybe she misremembered something, or she’d read the signals incorrectly?

Cassie was lying on her bed in her dorm room in Sawyer Hall on Friday night with her Brit Lit reader open in front of her when her phone went off unexpectedly. It was late at night - almost midnight, already. Rolling over onto her side, the tall blonde girl grabbed the small purple device off of her bedside table and glanced at the name of the incoming caller. Her heart jumped a bit when she saw Samantha’s name come up on the screen. She grinned, sitting back on her bed and taking a deep, calming breath before answering, pulling some of her hair out of her face (and mouth) and tucking it behind her ear, then holding the phone up to her cheek. “Well, you sure took your time,” she said teasingly, grinning. “I was beginning to think I had misread something.”

Sam, in her own tiny but blissfully private cinderblock dorm room on the far end of campus, smiled into the mouthpiece as she sat down on the edge of her bed. “Maybe I should have been more forward in the first place then.”

Cassie bit down on her lower lip and grinned again. “Well you were making pretty explicit eye contact — I’m eager to know what ‘more forward’ would look like.”

Samantha smirked and sat back a little. “A bit on the inappropriate side. If you’re looking for a demonstration, though…”

Cassie grinned and covered a laugh. “Demonstration or description … I’d be fine with either.”

The black haired girl chuckled and bit the corner of her lip, cocking her head. “Well let’s just say at this point I am gunning for an invite to your dorm room- but to warn you, I am that _bad girl_ all those “health” manuals failed to warn you about.”

“And what kind of ‘bad girl’ is that?” the blonde flirted back into the phone, lowering her voice seductively. “Like you said, I don’t think any of those ‘health’ manuals covered that. Or girls at all, actually. Mostly ‘boys.’”

Sam laughed and dropped back on her bed. “I noticed that too. They’ve left you woefully unprepared.”

“So what should I be prepared for?” Cassie grinned into the phone, grabbing a pillow and pulling it to her chest. Her hand trembled slightly with excitement.

Sam smirked. “Ohh…wandering hands, lipstick everywhere, disarmingly direct approaches…”

Cassandra laughed. “That doesn’t sound that different from most of my hetero dates in the past. I think you’ll have to give me a demonstration.”

Samantha smiled slowly. “Name the time and place.”

Cassie grinned, and bit down on her palm to keep from losing her cool and giggling into the phone. Holding the mouthpiece receiver away from her face, she took a deep breath and then brought it close again. “Hmmmm… I think I’m free… tomorrow night, if you are.”

Samantha’s eyebrows shot up when the other girl suggested tomorrow; both simultaneously encouraged and made anxious by Cassie’s eagerness. She ran a good game up front, but the officialness of this suddenly made her a little nervous. “…I’m free too. Is this…coffee? A meal? Your place?”

Cassie grinned smugly at the slight anxiousness in the other girl’s voice, and was quite pleased with the reaction. It was nice to know she wasn’t the only one who was feeling excited and nervous about this connection. She took a slow, deep breath after Samantha’s question, and then in a softer, more tender tone, she replied: “Well… I was hoping for something a, uh, _little more intimate_ than coffee…”

The answer was the most of what Samantha had hoped and feared, but it brought the confidence back to her voice because at least now she knew where she stood; even if it was on the edge of a cliff. “…Dinner then. I’m free after 6pm.”

Cassie grinned and bit her lip again. This time she failed to keep the excitement out of her voice, half-whooping with excitement. “Where?”

The black-haired girl sat up on her bed again, thinking about it for a minute. “There’s a bistro a few blocks off campus I’ve been meaning to try…”

“A bistro….” Cassie couldn’t keep herself from giggling. “Now I feel like I’m dating high-class; do I sound like a plebeian if I confess that I don’t actually know what a bistro is? I picture… deli-counter and ham sandwiches.”

Samantha laughed. “Just like any other less-formal dining place only lighter fare and Panini’s.”

The blonde returned the laugh in kind, blushing at herself. “What should I wear, Miss High Class?”

Samantha smiled. “Not a prom dress and not denim.”

Cassie grinned. “Mmkay. 8pm?”

Sam’s eyes darkened and sparkled. “Eight is great.”

Cassie sucked in a breath and bit her lip again, feeling excitement running through her like a live current. Her whole body was trembling now. “Alright,” she said, somewhat breathlessly. “I’ll see you then, beautiful.”

Samantha grinned and gave a little squirm where she was on her bed, leaning into the phone. “Until then. Sweet dreams.”

Cassie hung up immediately, to keep herself from breaking into excited, nervous giggles on the phone. The giggles erupted almost as soon as she tossed the phone away from herself and sent it spinning through the room into her laundry hamper. Pulling her pillow to her face, the blonde girl squealed and laughed into it for a moment, rocking up and down in and on the bed. Then she grinned, jumped up off of the bed (dropping the pillow behind her on the matress) and crept out of her bedroom and across the hall into Julie’s adjoining dorm room to give her the news.

 

* * *

 

For their date the next evening, Samantha wore a little black halter dress with an A-line skirt that went a little gauzy at the hem that hung at her thighs. Her long black hair, even when flat-ironed, still held a soft wave. She hung around the front of the dark trendy bistro fingering a Suzanna Dai earring on one of her lobes for a while before the attention she was starting to receive drove her inside.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away from the bistro, Cassandra wasn’t running late, _technically_ , but she felt like it. Although she was only two blocks away from the bistro, weaving her way briskly through the crowds of milling pedestrians circulating in, around, and through the sidewalks all around her as they traipsed in and out of the various little independent shoppes and cafes that littered the cute little neighborhood where the bistro was located, her phone said she only had three minutes to make it to the restaurant before she was officially late. As a result, she was hurrying, half-running, half-dancing her way through the crowds in a pair of above-the-knee black felt boots, black hose, a white and black plaid skirt, black hip-length jacket over a white sweater.

Half of the clothes Cassie was wearing were new– she’d only just bought them this morning on a shopping trip with Donna, her older ‘sister.’ The blonde girl had called the older young woman at just a few minutes after eleven this morning, freaking out about what she should wear this evening, desperate to make a good impression on the hot girl with the lusciously long and silky black hair, and feeling like her usual wardrobe of hip-huggers, t-shirts, and the odd sweater just wasn’t going to cut it for ‘impress the pretty girl’ duty. For her part, Donna had been _delighted_ to have any excuse to take take her slightly-too-homespun ‘little sister’ shopping at some of the fancier boutiques in Metropolis. For over a year now she’d been ragging the younger girl about her casual, unfashionable wardrobe, reminding her about the not-so-modest expense account that her… _special_ extracurricular activities had granted her some access to, but Cassie had always been so wrapped up in her schoolwork and those very same semi-professional extracurriculars that she’d never felt like she had the time to sink into hunting for fancy outfits that suited her own personal sense of style. But on her shopping trip this afternoon the blonde girl been so excited about her evening outing, and who it was with, that she’d finally made a modest dent in that expense account budget. The results looked and felt incredible – and it was more than just clothing.

A pair of sparkling, diamond-shaped ruby earrings and a matching necklace were gifts from Donna, as well as the shampoo and style job on her hair (worn down and around her neck and shoulders with a gentle wave in it) and the makeup she was wearing. For the first time, really, she _felt_ like the beautiful young woman that her mother, her sister, and her friends had been telling her she was for over two years now. Her face was boldly made-up with a rich red lipstick, black eyeliner, mascara, glittering eye shadow, the works. She’d even made the cosmetologist at the Salon Donna had dragged her to show her how to do it on her own so that if, by any miracle, this date were to have a follow-up, she’d be able to replicate some of the artistry she was currently wearing. Leaving her room that afternoon after Donna had dropped her off, Cassie had dashed out onto the streets of Metropolis feeling like she’d wanted to feel for this date: beautiful, desirable, and well-put-together. And even now, even though the foot traffic on the way to the bistro had been heavier than she’d expected and had slowed her down considerably, glancing at the time on her cellphone as she rounded the last turn and started heading down the last two blocks to the bistro, with only two minutes to spare, the blonde girl still felt like everything was going her way.

Of course, it was just as she was crossing the street to the last block between herself and the restaurant that everything began to fall apart.

First there was an explosion. Glancing up in alarm, Cassandra saw the front windows of the downtown Metropolis One Bank branch blow outwards, showering the street in glass and bricks and rubble and knocking dozens of people to the ground. Alarms went off all up and down the street as cars were rocked by the shockwave. Then an extremely tall, impossibly muscular, Caucasian-colored masked man with huge arms and shoulders, carrying several bags full of cash, jumped out of the shattered windows, roaring at the bystanders and the security guards. The gigantic brute was wearing a black, full-face leather mask and a red, broadly-stretched t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, paired with ripped and torn blue-jeans and a pair of scuffed up combat boots. His bare arms sported biceps with circumferences the width of fire hydrants.

A police car that had been passively cruising down the street up until the moment of the explosion screeched to a stop a few yards in front of Cassie, and the officers inside jumped out of the vehicle, shouting for the muscular, masked man to drop the bags and put his hands in the air. Instead of doing as they commanded, though, the man with the bags grabbed the nearest car parked on his side of the street and lifted it into the air with complete and utter ease, hurling it at the officers – and by extension Cassandra and the dozen or so bystanders clustered around her _behind_ the police officers – with a roar. 

Cassie glanced up at the flying car as it careened through the air in her direction, groaning and grimacing. 

“Oh, crap.”

She was gonna be late for her date. 

 

* * *

 

Meanwhile, in the bistro just across the street and down a block from where the action was taking place, Samantha was sitting at a table near the back of the restaurant- alone- her eyebrows rising higher and higher on her forehead as the minutes ticked past. Checking her phone for the umpteenth time, the raven-haired girl sat back in her seat with a disgruntled expression on her face when she saw that her display read five after. No one had ever been late to a date with Samantha before. Her head turned for a moment as police cars came wailing down the street outside her window, but the majority of Metropolis residents had become so desensitized to the regular commotion that accompanied life in their city that police cars didn’t even interest them anymore. Since she’d been born and raised in this city largely during what residents referred to as its _post-Zod_ -era, she and her friends were hard to ruffle. What did ruffle her, though, were the implications of a late date. She’d been cool enough on the phone, aloof enough, she thought, to imply that a _little_ effort was required to secure her, and yet there she was, alone, five minutes after their date was set to begin.

Outside, Cassie was battling the big burly guy who had just smashed his way through the window a Metropolis One bank branch. Having tossed her purse under another car the moment she’d seen the first car being launched into the air, the blonde girl had leapt up into the air above the officers’ heads and caught the flung automobile in her arms with a grunt of effort - to the chorus of startled gasps from the bystanders beneath her. Hovering over the street with one knee raised and one leg fully extended beneath her, holding a car over her head without straining, while the wind stirred her blonde locks around her face and whipped her skirt lazily around her legs, Cassandra made an impressive sight, and as she hovered above the street with the car held up over her head, she ordered the man with the bags to comply with the police officers' instruction. But as she caught sight of her reflection in one of the windows of the car she was holding, the blonde teen superheroine cursed silently when she realized that she was exposing herself without her costumed disguise – complete with its accompanying black wig – for the first time since she’d made superheroing her extracurricular, semi-professional career. As ‘Wonder Girl,’ Cassie had always used a black wig to disguise her identity, but here she was, only a couple of blocks away from her campus and her new college friends, holding a car over her head as she hovered over the street for everyone to see, blonde hair flowing in the breeze.

Unfortunately, those ruminations didn’t last long. Her first demand to the masked man didn’t go over well– first demands never did– and in response the big, hulking brute of a guy jumped into the street and ripped a manhole cover out of the ground, holding it aloft with a roar. At first, Cassie wasn’t too concerned – even if he threw it at her, a manhole cover wasn’t going to seriously hurt her. But then something much more worrisome happened. The dark, hard-wrought iron material of the manhole cover seemed to _melt_ down the brute’s arms, covering his skin– _becoming his skin_ – until his whole body appeared to be made up of the extremely thick, durable metal.

“Ohhhhhh, crap crap crap craaaap,” Cassie was muttering to herself, getting a _really bad feeling_ about the implications of what she’d just witnessed, even as the man of metal hurled the manhole cover at her. Using the car as a shield, she caught the cover by burying it in the hood of the car, and then (deciding that the car was an insurance loss now anyway) she grabbed hold of some of the vehicle’s undercarriage and swung it like a giant hammer over her head and down onto the brute’s. The impact sounded like a small explosion, and windows a block in either direction shook from the impact...

 

* * *

 

Inside the bistro, Sam was getting more and more tense about the lateness of her ‘date’, only to be distracted by the bistro’s windows shuddering. The black-haired girl turned her head and blinked quickly, her senses engaging on reflex. Her sharp vision traced the ripple of the glass as it shuddered and her supernatural hearing followed that ripple like a bullet toward the sound, broadcasting the fight into her head as if she were standing right next to it.

Unfortunately for Cassandra, bringing the car down on the brute’s head didn’t have the impact she had been hoping for. Well, it had _an_ _impact_. The concussive explosion as metal thundered against metal made windows shudder and her hands shake. The brute himself was crushed to the ground by the blow, but only momentarily. A second later, as the pipes and engine parts she was holding onto came apart in her hands, the brute grabbed the side of the car with his massive arms and tore it from her grasp. Cassandra raised both of her arms over her head and double fisted her hands, belting the metal-bodied brute across the face and making him drop the car again even as he was raising it to hit her. The blow – fists with the strength of Hercules against hard-wrought Iron – made her hands hurt, but the brute buckled and staggered back.

Roaring, the giant man of metal came at her again. “Who the hell are you, girlie?” He bellowed, grabbing at her. His slow fists were easy to dodge, and Cassandra grabbed hold of his shoulders, vaulting forward over him and landing on the balls of her boots. She tossed the brute over her shoulder and down the suddenly-emptied street so that he landed with a grunt a few dozen yards from her (closer to the Bistro – although she didn’t realize it at the time). Picking himself up off of the ground, the big burly growled back at her again, wiping dust off of his arms. “I thought this was Superman’s town!”

“I’m new here,” Cassandra snipped, diving in after the brute and pummeling him with her fists. Each blow made her wince, but the strength and swiftness of her assault was such that the brute wasn’t able to retaliate. Instead, he staggered back again. Cassie grunted, following after him with her tiny, punishing fists, and growled back, gritting her teeth. “Who are _you_?”

Suddenly, however, the brute surprised her by grabbing her feet, sweeping her off of the ground, and swinging her around, tossing her across the street and into the brick wall of a tall cinder-block apartment building across the street from the Bistro. The impact was explosive. Bits of crushed brick and rubble rained down around her, and the brute charged after her, throwing himself on top of her and pummeling _her_ now with his giant fists of wrought iron. “I’m ANOMALY, bitch!”, he yelled, chortling with laughter, “Now tell me who you are!”

 

* * *

 

Samantha stepped out of the front door of the bistro just as Cassandra and Anomaly crashed into the building across the street. She was the only person who didn’t run away or so much as flinch as the rubble went flying in every direction. In fact, she was transfixed on the fight. From inside the restaurant, she'd heard every word of the exchange between 'Anomaly' and _her date_ \- HER DATE! - with her own... _uniquely enhanced_ hearing. The revelation that she’d accidentally set up a date with superheroine hadn’t completely landed yet though, because she’d never seen a metahuman fight  up-close before, and she was too busy noticing how eerie her relative lack of fear was under the circumstances. It was a strange reaction, but no one was looking in her direction enough to have noticed it because the people on the streets were too busy cowering or fleeing. She only saw a blur of blonde before Anomaly obstructed the view, but she’d heard Cassandra’s voice earlier, she’d heard the entire conversation as clear as a bell. In fact she’d heard her like she’d been standing right next to her.

“Nice…. name…. weirdo….!” Cassie grunted back at her attacker on the other side of the street, having taken several serious hits to the face and torso before she was able to begin fending off punches with deflecting blows. “…do you have business cards?” The big man merely roared again and redoubled his assault, head-butting the blonde girl back against the wall and dazing her before he began pounding on her again. Cassandra took the beating for a few seconds, grunting and groaning as she was pummeled further into the brick wall of the building. Eventually she managed to get her knee up between herself and Anomaly, and lashing out with all her might, she kicked him hard across the street, into the side of a car just a few feet from the front of the Bistro. The side of the car folded up around Anomaly like an accordion, and the opposite side of the vehicle lifted off of the ground before crashing back down, it's pitiful security alarm squawking for a few seconds before it sputtered and went out. Then, yelling herself, Cassie launched herself off of the building and across the street, moving quick to grab the metal man while he was still slightly dazed and fling him high up into the air. “And _my_ name is Wonder Girl, ‘ _bitch_ ’!”

While her date continued to slug it out with a super villain just a few yards away from where she was standing, Samantha stared at the both of them and followed the fight a little wide-eyed, almost shell-shocked, and in truth more than a little excited by Cassie’s show of combined muscle and swagger. She was not only totally at home in this role, but displayed a kind of confidence she wouldn’t have guessed the demure blonde she’d met in the Met U quad was capable of. When the blonde girl got the upper hand again and hurled the villain into the air, Samantha’s eyes were drawn to Anomaly as he lifted off the ground, but then she looked back at Cassandra- _Wonder Girl_ \- and just blinked at her, as if awaiting an explanation.

Anomaly was launched way, _way_ up into the air, high over their heads, and Cassandra, taking a deep breath and brushing some of the building rubble out of her hair, jumped down off of the car and gathered herself, shaking her head to stop the stars that were spinning in front of her face, before preparing to launch herself into the sky in pursuit. When she caught sight of Samantha, however, standing just a few yards away from her, she blinked, froze, and then belatedly and pathetically tried to cover her hair with her hands, looking surprised and stricken. Their eyes met for half a second before she leapt into the air.

**Author's Note:**

> Super-clone Science stuff: Given the various kinds of tinkering and multi-trial formulae that Lexcorp and Cadmus scientists no-doubt engaged in while trying to produce a viable Super-clone from their small sample of Kryptonian DNA we figure there's no reason that SuperBOY couldn't have been SuperGIRL (keeping in mind that gender isn't automatically tied to genitalia or chromosomes.) A lot of what follows is just speculation about how things might have gone had the Superclone been assigned biologically female at birth. It's also a fantastic excuse to write an awesome ship as femslash. And clones!


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